OFDM-based optical integrated sensing and communication framework using embedded pilot subcarriers

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This work investigates an optical integrated sensing and communication (O-ISAC) system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) with embedded pilot subcarriers. A shared optical waveform is employed to support simultaneous data transmission and sensing without additional spectral overhead. Pilot tones originally introduced for channel estimation are reused to extract sensing-related information, enabling dual functionality within a single OFDM frame. A MATLAB-based simulation framework is developed to evaluate both communication reliability and sensing accuracy under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel conditions representative of short-reach optical links. The transmitter and receiver hardware configurations are explicitly defined, including a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM)-based optical frontend ( λ = 1550 nm , V π = 4 V ) and a coherent detection receiver with 64-point FFT processing. Numerical results show that the proposed system achieves pre-forward-error-correction bit error rates below 10 −3 at optical signal-to-noise ratios above 12 dB using 16-QAM modulation, while sensing accuracy improves monotonically with increasing SNR, as reflected by reduced mean absolute pilot error (MAPE). The results demonstrate that pilot-assisted optical OFDM provides an effective trade-off between communication performance and sensing capability, supporting spectrally efficient multifunctional operation. This study offers a practical simulation-based performance benchmark for optical ISAC systems and provides a foundation for future experimental validation and system optimization